


Long Before The Sky Would Open

by emmram



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: M/M, Porthagnan, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 08:34:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3320840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmram/pseuds/emmram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There should be a word, Porthos thinks, that means everything he sees on d’Artagnan’s face in that fleeting moment between murder and elation: loss, desolation, a cross between grief and satisfaction and terror that is about as precarious as it sounds."</p><p>Porthos and d'Artagnan, in the moments inbetween.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Before The Sky Would Open

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: SPOILERS till 2.04: Emilie. Metaphor-abuse. A connecting emotional thread that’s more tenuous than anything, frankly.

**_Long Before The Sky Would Open_ **

There should be a word, Porthos thinks, that means everything he sees on d’Artagnan’s face in that fleeting moment between murder and elation: loss, desolation, a cross between grief and satisfaction and terror that is about as precarious as it sounds. Gaudet lies torn open and bleeding on the ground even as Aramis declares new life for Athos, and d’Artagnan—he stands as though he doesn’t know the significance of either of those things, or perhaps as though he knows it too well.

The moment passes, but something has changed.

Athos talks of his father when he is especially drunk—a memory’s memory floating on a cup of wine. There is a remote sort of fondness in his voice, but none of the guardedness he assumes when he talks of those he holds particularly close to his heart; for Athos, true love is worthless without pain. Aramis is dismissive of his father on the few occasions that he’s ever talked of the man; he is quick to disown his father’s limited ambitions, earthy soul, and Spanish heritage, even as he closes white-knuckled hands over his Bible. As for Porthos, well—his fathers have been a succession of cruel business partnerships since the day he turned five years old and realised he was truly alone in this world. He thought he’d left the yearning for family the moment he’d left the Court to become a soldier, but now he looks at d’Artagnan and thinks dangerous, terrible things about the privilege of loss.

He waits for d’Artagnan to grieve, tells himself it’s a matter of time, as though it were a spectacle—just as explosive as the moment the young man came bursting into their garrison, vengeance in his eyes. There is a part of him that waits for this during thunderstorms and when standing over fresh corpses, but d’Artagnan never reacts.

“Your father would’ve been proud,” Porthos tells him one evening after the affair with Vadim. “You’ve got to remember that.”

d’Artagnan flinches and his hand trembles as he polishes his dagger. “Perhaps,” he says, and he polishes and breathes and polishes and breathes and leaves Porthos berating himself for his cruelty, yet hoping, anyway, for one more vicarious moment of genuine emotion.

* * *

 

Porthos breathes in the dust and sweat and despair of a story he has heard so many times that he might as well have been one of the slaves packed into ships like Bonnaire’s, uprooted and rotting and adrift. He knows that, truly, he is living the sequel to that story—he is rooted in foreign soil, twisted and shaped uniquely by its vagaries, yet reaching for the sun of a different sky.

d’Artagnan cries at this story. Later in the garrison, much later, he checks and bandages Porthos’ wound and says, “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

His hand rests for a moment in the middle of Porthos’ bare back, warm and sure. “For everything I’ve never asked and never bothered to tell.”

Porthos closes his eyes. “You can talk now,” he says.

The hand twitches, then disappears. d’Artagnan doesn’t return for the rest of the evening.

* * *

 

A clear-eyed d’Artagnan confesses to him, “I did think you did it for a moment there, you know. I mean, perhaps you were drunk, and perhaps I was stupid, but I did think it.”

Porthos has never been prouder of him.

* * *

 

Porthos is preparing to leave his quarters for a night of hopefully indecent revelry now that d’Artagnan has finally earned his commission; it _would_ have been even better had he actually received any sort of prize money, of course, but there’s more than enough for cause for celebration as it is.

He hears a knock at his door and before he can so much as open his mouth, d’Artagnan bursts in, his hair wild and tangled and the smell of stale wine hanging about him like a miasma. d’Artagnan strides towards Porthos without preamble, throws his arms around him and buries his face in his neck like he’s planting a part of himself there. Porthos slowly closes his arms around him, bemused, and feels d’Artagnan tremble, his hot breath shuddering against his skin.

He considers asking d’Artagnan what’s wrong once, then twice, but there’s wetness on his shoulder now, and Porthos feels so terribly wretched that he can scarcely believe that he had once _wanted_ this. There is nothing beautiful or cathartic about the rawness of this emotion, but at least d’Artagnan’s here in his arms rather than drowning in wine and picking fights on the streets, and for that at least, Porthos is grateful.

They stay like that for a long time.

* * *

 

Aramis is the only one among them who is not surprised when the gunshot wound scoring d’Artagnan’s ribs gets infected.

d’Artagnan spends a few days in bed with a fever that’s always just high enough to be annoyingly uncomfortable; it makes him restless and loud and, well, _clingy_. A guilty Athos can scarcely bear d’Artagnan’s sweaty affections without reaching for the nearest bottle of wine; Aramis is cool and brisk and efficient, slapping away d’Artagnan’s hands when he can, and threatening him with his scalpel when he can’t.

Porthos is left to spend the most time with d’Artagnan, and he doesn’t protest when d’Artagnan grabs his hand and rests it under his cheek like a pillow, considering that the last time he touched him, he was kneeling in the mud with d’Artagnan as pale and still as death. D’Artagnan breathes in little congested snores against his hand as he sleeps, and Porthos allows himself the conceit that, for a moment, he’d tethered d’Artagnan’s life to his body just with that touch.

* * *

 

Porthos settles heavily on the bench as Treville bustles about, issuing orders to have horses for Ambassador Perales and his escort ready. The letter from General de Foix lies half-crumpled in his hand, seemingly forgotten, but he knows he will never forget what is written within.

_Your father was a great man, Porthos du Vallon, and the recompense I offer is humble in comparison to the incredible debt I owe him, but I beseech you to accept it…_

He doesn’t know why Treville lied; he doesn’t know why de Foix chose to tell him this only when past the security of the Veil. For that matter, he doesn’t know why Aramis is so distracted, or why Athos walks as if the invisible irons tethering him to the ground have grown immeasurably heavier. All he knows is that they do not trust him with the reasons, and the truth of it prickles along his skin and settles in his hands as a burning—

d’Artagnan stops beside him, securing his weapons belt. Porthos cannot bear to look.

d’Artagnan sits next to him, wordlessly, then takes his burning hand and places a quick kiss on his fingers. Porthos blinks and turns to look at him; d’Artagnan’s face is impassive, but his eyes are on Porthos and his hand is in his hand and it’s a moment of perfect stillness in the middle of this storm that’s raging both within and without.

For now, d’Artagnan understands. And for now, that is enough.

**_Finis_ **


End file.
